Where the Animals Go: Tracking Wildlife with Technology in 50 Maps and Graphics

by James Cheshire, Oliver Uberti

Overview

"Where the Animals Go is beautiful and thrilling, a combination of the best in science and exposition, and a joy to study cover to cover." —Edward O. Wilson, University Research Professor Emeritus, Harvard University

For thousands of years, tracking animals meant following footprints. Now satellites, drones, camera traps, cellphone networks, and accelerometers reveal the natural world as never before. Where the Animals Go is the first book to offer a comprehensive, data-driven portrait of how creatures like ants, otters, owls, turtles, and sharks navigate the world. Based on pioneering research by scientists at the forefront of the animal-tracking revolution, James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti’s stunning, four-color charts and maps tell fascinating stories of animal behavior. These astonishing infographics explain how warblers detect incoming storms using sonic vibrations, how baboons make decisions, and why storks prefer garbage dumps to wild forage; they follow pythons racing through the Everglades, a lovelorn wolf traversing the Alps, and humpback whales visiting undersea mountains. Where the Animals Go is a triumph of technology, data science, and design, bringing broad perspective and intimate detail to our understanding of the animal kingdom.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393634020
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/19/2017
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	428,142
Product dimensions:	9.90(w) x 11.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

James Cheshire is professor of geographic information and cartography at University College London.

Oliver Uberti is a Los Angeles–based designer and a former design editor for National Geographic.

Editorial Reviews

"[Where the Animals Go] is an enthralling volume, downright gorgeous in its illustrations and text. Its double intent is brilliant, too — to bring each of us closer to the animal world and to highlight fresh ways to think about conservation."

NPR - Barbara King

"Cheshire and Uberti write about billions of data points being collected—some by citizen scientists—and their ravishing maps put this information to good use…[They] show us with precision and clarity where the animals go."

The Washington Post

"A striking example of how innovative technology can be used to increase our understanding of the natural world."

Financial Times

"[W]ell laid out, easy to understand and a pleasure to return to many times."

Seattle Times

"In recent years, technology has made it possible to track animal movements from afar in more and more detail… [Cheshire and Uberti] have dipped into this deluge of data to create 50 beautiful and engaging maps that reveal the wanderings of animals."

National Geographic

"Where the Animals Go elegantly elucidates the role new technologies has played in expanding our knowledge of animal migration."

Science

"Part coffee-table album, part scientific research compendium, [Where the Animals Go] presents these global perambulations in lush detail, reveling in their minutiae and in the technological leaps that make such observations possible. . . tracking an animal through time and space transforms it from a mere object of scientific interest into a story whose unsolved mysteries capture our imagination."

Undark Magazine - M. R. O'Connor

"This is a special kind of detective story. After millennia of using footprints, feces, feathers, broken foliage and nests to track animals, the process is now so teched up you need to read this book to find out the how, what and why."

New Scientist

"An enthralling look at the world that technology can help us uncover… Exquisite."

British Trust for Ornithology - Emily Scragg

"[A] stunning translation of movement onto paper."

Scientific American

"This book is beautiful as well as informative and inspiring. There is no doubt it will help in our fight to save wildlife and wild habitats."

Jane Goodall

★ 11/15/2017
This gorgeous data trove is refreshing in its admission that scientists are nowadays awash in the flood of information that comes from animal tracking devices and methods, and that even that is a fraction of what could be collected. Cheshire (geography, Univ. Coll. London) and Uberti (formerly senior design editor, National Geographic; both, London: The Information Capital) are relative amateurs in a field that doesn't even have a fixed name yet come across as pleasantly wonderstruck by the technology involved in, and the results of, animal tracking work. They impart earnest accounts of scientists' endeavors and some of the individual subject creatures involved. Accompanying the text are beautifully designed four-color maps and other visualizations that illustrate some of the breakthroughs that have been made using this newly found information—one map shows, for example, how the Ethiopian government had to redraw the boundaries of a giraffe conservation park after tracking data made it clear that the giraffes lived elsewhere. VERDICT The illustrations and step-by-step data-collection efforts combine to create an inspiring introduction to an important area of science.—Henrietta Verma, National Information Standards Organization, Baltimore

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